Moving back to Kansas City, and the adjustment to being here, was sorta like being caught in a tornado, spun around real fast, blown over, and upon getting up, the world looks very different. That being said, I'm back on my feet, and trying to build (and be) something that I can be proud of here.
During this time of discovery, I'm learning that patience is something I lack. I don't know if the intense pace of life (which I've maintained out of necessity) I've had for the last ten years is the reason, or if it's just my nature, but I lack patience.
I think it's easy to identify and convict people of being "impatient", when we see them being that way towards a person or in an activity, but it's harder to identify it when looking at your own priorities. I've used all kinds of different terms to describe myself; a go getter, determined, a planner, driven, and goal oriented, but never impatient. I realized this week, that I've actively pursued an attitude of impatience for a very long time, and the results of which are going to be hard to undo.
I've always been a person, that when I decided that I wanted to do something, go somewhere, or have something, I would do whatever was necessary to attain that goal as quickly as possible. This attitude has allowed me to achieve many goals that many other people talk about, but never actually do; a fact that created a sense of pride in myself.
However, life happens, and sometimes there's nothing you can do about. To someone like me, "nothing you can do about it", doesn't exist in my vocabulary, so I twist myself up into knots to "fix" things, so as to ensure that everything sticks to my plan and within my time-line. After all, if you're persistent, you get what you want.
"Malarkey", I say! If persistence was all it took to get what I wanted, I'd be a millionaire in California, married with two kids, have a horse on my property, and have the love and support of friends that would never think about ever leaving me. Not a single one of the things listed above, are true about my life right now, not even close.
When I first moved back to Missouri earlier this year, I had an encounter with a totally random guy on the street, who told me, that God told him to tell me, that I was about to have the best year of my life. It's funny that someone would tell me something like that right after my life totally fell apart, and my future looked like a big black hole, and after all, wasn't it God who allowed everything to fall a part in the first place?
Tweet: Patience #somethingIlack
I got a dog this fall, her name is Phoebe, and she's a little Cocker Spaniel, and yes, she's very cute.
What was I thinking?!!! Puppies must be housebroken, and Cocker Spaniels are counted as one of the most sensitive and emotionally needy breeds of dogs there are. I got myself a dog that is always demanding some sort of attention from me, and insists on needing to go outside when it's cold and raining. Patience.
It's actually Phoebe that I can thank for this train of thought. Last week, I was sitting on the couch with someone, and Phoebe was driving me totally nuts. It started early, it was the weekend, and she insisted on getting me out of bed at 7am to take her outside (her normal time during the work week), but then she wouldn't let me go back to bed, she'd just sit there and cry outside my door. So... finally, I'm up, I'm dressed, I'm sitting on the couch next to someone who's opinion of me, I still question, and Phoebe is sitting on the floor next to me, starring up at me and whining. I'm totally exasperated, and I say out loud, "stop being so needy, you're totally driving me crazy!" My friend responds to my outburst, by saying "dogs are the way that their people make them."
Oh my gosh, like a bomb had just exploded in my face, I was confused with how to process the comparison. On the one hand, yes, people train their dogs (even without meaning to) to be the way they are, and if this is true without exception, then my friend was drawing a comparison between myself and a needy dog. Not good. On the other hand, Cocker Spaniels are known for being needy, and so it just happens to be that I own a dog that needs my attention all the time.
Regardless of the motivation or thought behind what my friend said, it got me to thinking about being emotionally needy. It made me ask myself if I'm a cocker spaniel.
Alright, time to connect all these ramblings. I've always decided what I wanted, or what I needed, and made it happen. I've treated my relationships with people the same way. If I love them enough, they'll love me back, persistence ALWAYS pays off. Oh my goodness, I'm a cocker spaniel!
Life has always moved fast for me, but to some extent, I wanted it that way. I'm in Kansas City now, something that wasn't part of my plan, and my life looks very different, it all moves at a totally different pace. I'm a person who knows what she wants, doesn't always know how to get it, but is always in a hurry to figure it out, and is totally relentless in making attempts at it until I get it. But it's weird now, knowing what I want, but realizing that I can't always work for what I want. It's weird to grasp the idea that you can love and care about something so much, but no amount of anything I can do, can make it love me back, when and the way I want it to.
Patience. Patience is something that I'm trying to learn, patience is something I'm trying to adapt to the way I live every day, and patience is something I'm understanding now, that God has in spades!
I don't want to use this blog for epic emotions anymore, I want to re-invent myself, do something new. Who knows, maybe with a little patience, all this junk from the past year will actually mean something good. This is, after all, going to be the best year of my life.
